mempool.space Lightning Dashboard

The mempool.space Lightning Dashboard is a live, open-source explorer for the public Lightning Network. It reports aggregate figures such as total public network capacity, the number of public nodes, and the number of public channels, along with rankings and historical charts.

It is a convenient, continuously updated reference for the network's publicly observable footprint, and it is the kind of dashboard most "how big is Lightning" figures ultimately trace back to.

Its central limitation is built into what it can see. The dashboard measures only public channels and nodes. It cannot observe private channels or the custodial and exchange flows that increasingly carry Lightning volume, so its totals understate real usage and should not be read as a complete picture.

Because it is a live dashboard rather than a dated report, the specific numbers it shows change continuously; cite it for current public-network figures, with that caveat in mind.